As Steven Knight proved a decade ago with the Tom Hardy vehicle Locke, viewers can be riveted by a feature film set entirely within a moving car at night. Now, Mercy Road gives that concept an Aussie spin. It’s a real change of pace for John Curran, heretofore known for directing tony, buttoned-up awards bait like The Painted Veil and Stone. Here, he loosens the collar and tells the world to eat his dust.
Hardy’s luxury car is downgraded to a dirty work truck driven by Tom (Luke Bracey, 2015’s Point Break remake), who’s fleeing the site of where something bad just happened. I’ll let you learn the “what”s and “why”s as Curran intends, with hints dropped a quarter-mile at a time; suffice to say, Tom’s searching frantically for his 12-year-old daughter, who isn’t answering her phone. According to an ominous caller identifying himself as “an associate” (Toby Jones, Berberian Sound Studio), Tom has exactly 60 minutes to find her.
As the clock ticks, so does your pulse. With a recurring cameo from one of those notorious Australian spiders and Curran’s own intense score banging on the left-hand side of the piano, Mercy Road makes for a stressful ride. Bracey makes you feel it, too, selling his accelerating frustration and panic with a worn-raw throat and bursts of unplanned spittle.
I only wish the resolution were concrete. No fewer than three endings run right after the other, I assume rendering the previous one null and void. It’s unclear — and this sure ain’t Clue — as we’re left with more questions when Tom kills the ignition. —Rod Lott